China marks 75th anniversary of Nanking massacre amid tense relations with Japan

Air raid sirens sounded in the Chinese city of Nanjing on Thursday as it marked the 75th anniversary of the mass killing  and rape committed there by Japanese soldiers – with the Asian powers’ ties at  a deep low.

The two countries – the world’s second- and third-largest economies – have extensive trade and business links, but the weight of history still bears heavily on their relationship.

The ceremony at the Nanjing Massacre Museum, attended by 9,000 people,  began with the singing of China’s national anthem as soldiers in dress uniforms  carried large wreaths across a stage.

Beforehand an elderly woman cried as she placed flowers by the names of  family members listed among the victims on a gray stone wall, and a group of  Chinese and Japanese Buddhist monks chanted sutras to pray for world peace.

China says 300,000 civilians and soldiers died in a spree of killing, rape and destruction in the six weeks after the Japanese military entered the then capital on December 13, 1937.

Some foreign academics put the number of deaths lower, including China historian Jonathan Spence who estimates that 42,000 soldiers and citizens were killed and 20,000 women raped, many of whom later died.